Number Nine
by Girl With The Dandelion
Summary: "This face makes my chest hurt; or is it my heart aching? In this abyss, I can't tell the difference." A one shot from Katniss' POV during Mockingjay.


I remember darkness. I remember emptiness. Every time I think finally, _finally, _I have reached the end. Surely, I can die now; and yet I'm still fighting. As much as I just want to die, some part of my subconscious won't let me. I am not allowed to die. Why. Why do I have to live?

A few faces flash through my mind. Dead. Dead. Dead. Might as well be dead. Going to die. Hates me. Hates me. Dead. There is no one left. Only eight faces I can think of. No wait. Nine. One more person comes to mind. I shrink away from this face. This face makes my chest hurt; or is it my heart aching? In this abyss, I can't tell the difference. This face makes me confused. He makes me feel lost, hurt, afraid. He makes me feel safe, loved, warm. He makes me feel. For a brief moment, I don't want to die; but then I'm swimming in an ocean of eight faces who are better off if I am dead. Those eight faces engulf the one. I add him to the list under 'hates me.' Because he does. In my mental state, somehow I have managed to momentarily forget. He hates me. He _hates _me. There is no love anymore. I'm not sure there's even trust. I bury my Number Nine. Number Nine should not have made me doubt my will to die. If anything, he should have ensured the legitimacy of my reasons. I think about Number One.

Prim. My little duck Prim. The only reason any of this war, or at least my involvement in it, came to be. It felt like a hundred years ago I had volunteered for her to keep her out of the arena. Only two years. Two years. I extended her life by two miserable years. If I was being honest with myself, she was as good as dead the moment her name was called. Because really, she'd been living everyday as if it could've been her last. I'm surprised it took Snow this long to kill her. All along, all it would have taken was a threat against Prim and I would have done anything he asked of me. Anything. Prim. My baby Prim. The darkness tugged at me again.

Finnick. Poor, mad Finnick. My only friend. The only person who knew exactly what I had been going through. Finnick was the only one brave enough to approach the broken Mockingjay. He helped me with grace and brutal honesty, something most of the people in my life skirted around. And then finally, Finnick got his happy ending. He got his Annie. And the Capitol got him. I let the darkness pull me further.

My father. My long dead father. The Capitol bred me for rebellion the moment the mines killed him. I was practically a Career. Because they'd killed my farther, I had had to fight everyday. I was getting stronger. I was getting weaker. But I was learning. Learning how to survive. My daddy was gone because of them. The Capitol had started the spark in me all along.

Mother. Officially, she had lost everyone. She lost Prim too. She lost her actual baby. She lost her last child. She lost dad. She would lose me. She will never recover. Her mind completely left her when dad died. How will she ever move past the loss of her entire family? She won't. I know my mother. She will slowly die or take her own life. She and I were too much alike. We both deserved to hate each other, but couldn't find the strength to do so. We could lose ourselves to the darkness.

How many years did Haymitch have left? He was going to drink himself into oblivion. Especially now. He'd lost all of his friends. Prim was like family to him. He would lose me; another tribute dead in his long career of raising children for the slaughter. He would forever be consuming his liquor until it killed him, trapped in his own black void.

And how could I even try to repair my friendship with Gale? He must despise me now. I would hate him if the roles were reversed. If it had been one of his siblings killed and he'd done nothing to save them? If he'd inadvertently fueled a rebellion, essentially killing everyone he knew and loved and in the end thousands of other people including our District? Yeah, I'd hate him too. There could be no reconciliation. I would never expect one. This is just another reason I welcome death. To spare those I care about from further harm. Please, _please_, take me away.

Annie. I killed her Finnick. I killed her voice in the dark. She was alone with no one to call her back. Because of me. Annie, who waited for Finnick for God only knows how long, only to lose him forever. Surely, someone as already mentally unstable as she would never regain any sense of normalcy. Surely, she must hate me for taking away Finnick. I hate me for it.

My friend Cinna. He defied the Capitol right from the beginning. The Capitol likes to see their treasures turned into something even more beautiful, but Cinna wasted his talents on District 12. He had them give me my mockingjay pin, the symbol that made me. He sacrificed his life to show the Capitol what they were doing was wrong. He was fighting for the rebellion all along and I never even knew it. I didn't have the decency to know it. My only friend in the Capitol died trying to make me into something I could never be, something worth fighting for. He died pointlessly for me, because of me. I am a monster.

Through the growing darkness, for a brief moment, I feel light. I see light. I feel something touch me. It touches my hand I think. I can hear something. And somewhere inside me I feel. I feel the urge to reply. I feel the urge to fight.

Then the faces return, only now there are more than nine. Faces from the arena: Rue. Thresh. Clove. Cato. Marvel. Glimmer. All of them. Faces from home: Madge. Darius. Mayor Undersee. Everyone. The Capitol: Effie. Lavinia. Portia. All of them dead. Gone. Nothing left. Let the darkness take me.

But something holds me back. Face Number Nine. Something tells me to fight for him. Fight. Fight. Live.

Live for Prim, because it is what she would want. I would be dishonoring her if I let myself die. I would be letting all the evil that destroyed her win. Live for Prim.

Live for Finnick. My friend would be ashamed if I let myself waste the chance to _live. _And how could I leave the girl he left behind all alone? Live for Finnick.

Live for my father. How would he feel knowing he raised a daughter who gave up when things got too bad? He didn't. He raised a fighter. Live for my father.

Live for my mother. She would only give up if I did. And then her life would be on my hands as well. Mother deserved better than a daughter willing to die. Live for mom.

Live for Haymitch. Haymitch, who would be all alone if I died. Who would check on him? Who would make sure he wasn't living in his own filth? Who would make sure he wasn't completely alone? Live for Haymitch.

Live for Gale. My best friend. The boy who knew my mind as well as I did. The boy who would be crushed if I died. Whether or not I am responsible for all the pain and misery, Gale is still my friend. I can't believe I forgot that. Live for Gale.

Live for Annie. The darkness already dwells in Annie. I need to make sure she doesn't let it swallow her. I need to make sure she is always reminded of how much Finnick loved his Annie. Live for Annie.

Live for Cinna. If I die, every act of goodness, all the effort it took to make me a contender, to make me _important_would be for nothing. Cinna would have died for a coward. I can't be a coward. Not anymore. Live for Cinna.

Live because my fellow tributes can't. Live because I owed it to my District who lost their lives because of the things I had done. Live for my friends in the Capitol who had fallen. Live.

I hear the voice again. This time, I can place the voice with a face. Number Nine. Peeta Mellark. "Stay with me. Please, stay with me." His voice is hoarse, like he's been crying. I feel his hand in mine. And then I start feeling everything all at once. Burns. Cuts. Sores. Burns. It all hurts. "Stay with me." I am afraid to open my eyes. I am afraid to look at myself. "Stay with me," he pleads. The response is on the tip of my tongue. Just as I am about to say it, I hear the door open. I hear more voices, but above it all, I hear Peeta.

"No. No, I can't leave her!"

"Peeta, you're not well enough yourself. You need more time to heal." That's Haymitch.

"At least let me say goodbye," Peeta whispers. I don't hear a response, but I feel his hand take mine so tightly it hurts, but in a good way. "I love you Katniss Everdeen. Slowly but surely, I am remembering. I love you and I need you to stay with me. Stay with me!" He's started shouting at the end as they drag him out of the room. Haymitch sits next to me; I know it's him because I can smell the alcohol on his breath. I hear one last "stay with me" before the door closes.

"Always," I whisper. "Always." I'm not coherent enough because when Haymitch calls for a doctor, all I can murmur is "always" about three more times before they put me under again.

* * *

When they ask me what I remember, I tell them nothing. "I remember Prim, and then nothing." It's not entirely true. I remember something about faces. This thought seems private to me for some reason. There was something about that moment that I did not wish to share. I can't remember what though. Faces. There were eight I think.

**Author's Note: **This was just one of the various ways I imagined Katniss having the courage to wake up after Prim died. Also, when you have a lot of medication in your system, you can forget things, even significant things. So basically, I'm not inventive enough to create a scenario in which Katniss remembers Peeta calling her back to him. So thus she forgets and the rest of Mockingjay can carry on, no changes made.

Unless of course you read Absolutely Real. Oh look, I have shamelessly promoted my completed extended version of Mockingjay. How'd that happen? And while my dignity is dead…REVIEWWWW. And I'll love you for always.

**P.S. **Since this is set during Katniss being in the hospital after suffering sever burns, she doesn't yet know it was District 13 that bombed Prim. Also, she doesn't know Effie is alive. NKESNRKLNE.


End file.
